Gerard David: Purity of Vision in an Age of Transition Book

The works of early Netherlandish painter Gerard David (ca. 1455-1523), an important figure of the Northern Renaissance, are freshly examined in this handsome book. One of the foremost scholars in the field presents new information resulting from a close examination of the world's largest collection of works by David, that in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

An introduction to the artist's working methods in his drawings, underdrawings, and documented paintings opens this fully illustrated scholarly treatment. The chapters that follow treat such subjects as David's origins and early works in Bruges, his development of the art of landscape painting, his response to a growing market demand in Bruges and Antwerp, and his accommodation to the interests of foreign patrons.

David's paintings are a key feature of the important exhibition "From Van Eyck to Bruegel" which opens at the Metropolitan in September 1998.

Library Journal

Gerard David (c.1455-1523) has often been dismissed as simply another Flemish artist. But Ainsworth (art history, Columbia Univ.) uses exciting methods to prove otherwise. Through infrared photography and dendrochronology, she discovers underdrawings and dates panels, revealing a dynamic pattern of stylistic change in an era of transition. David's techniques responded to the growing needs of an open market as well as the demands of foreign buyers; as Ainsworth shows, he was innovative and entrepreneurial, able to move from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance with style and spirit. Ainsworth is a senior fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which houses the single greatest collection of David's art, and she uses the collection ably to make her points. Art historians will find this book helpful, but artists will also be interested, since the creative process is here made tangible. [This book won the C.I.N.O.A. Prize for 1998, awarded by an international group of art and antiques dealers.--Ed.]--Nadine Dalton Speidel, Cuyahoga Cty. P.L., Parma, OH